Mildred Harnack-Fish

Portrait of Mildred Harnack

Mildred Harnack-Fish ( listening ^{? / I} ) (born September 16, 1902 in Milwaukee , Wisconsin , as Mildred Elizabeth Fish ; † February 16, 1943 in Berlin-Plötzensee ) was an American-German literary scholar , translator and resistance fighter against National Socialism .

Life

40 + 10 Pfennig - special stamp of the GDR Post 1964 with Mildred and Arvid Harnack

Harnack-Fish was the youngest child of William C. Fish and Georgina Hesketh Fish. Her siblings were Harriette, Marion Hesketh and Marbeau Fish. In 1919 she graduated from Western High School in Georgetown, Washington, DC and then studied literature. In 1926 she worked as a lecturer in German literature at the University of Wisconsin – Madison , where she met and married the lawyer and Rockefeller scholarship holder Arvid Harnack . In 1929 she moved to Berlin with Arvid . From 1932 to 1936 she worked as an English teacher at the Berlin evening high school (today: Peter-A.-Silbermann-Schule ). She did her doctorate in 1941 at the Ludwigs-Universität Gießen and worked as a lecturer and translator at the Faculty of Foreign Studies at the University of Berlin . From 1939/40 onwards, a lively group of resistant lecturers and students gathered there, including Harro Schulze-Boysen and Horst Heilmann . Until her arrest, she also worked as a lecturer at the Heilschen Abendgymnasium in Berlin-Schöneberg .

From 1933 onwards, together with her husband and the writer Adam Kuckhoff and his wife Greta Kuckhoff, she set up a discussion group that discussed political perspectives after the expected overthrow of the Nazi regime . In 1939 this resulted in the Red Chapel resistance network . Until the United States entered World War II , she was chairman of the women's club at the US Embassy in Berlin and was close friends with Martha Dodd , the daughter of Ambassador William Edward Dodd . The Harnacks were later friends with Counselor Donald R. Heath and his wife Louise. Donald heath jr. later wrote: “Mildred was a guy like Julie Christie in Doctor Zhivago, really interesting. I was drawn to her. She looked very Nordic and wore old-fashioned clothes. It caught people's eyes. It didn't escape you even in a crowded room. It worked on men. Very noticeable. A total presence, her voice, her sight, her thinking. "

She supported her husband, who had worked for the Soviet intelligence service since 1935 , and helped him compile political, military and economic information. Until the end of June 1941, the group had contact with members of the Soviet embassy and tried to warn of the impending German attack on the Soviet Union . In August 1942, radio communications from the Belgian group with the addresses of Adam Kuckhoff, Harro Schulze-Boysen and Ilse Stöbe were deciphered.

On September 7, 1942, Arvid and Mildred Harnack were arrested by the SS while on vacation in East Prussia. On December 19, the Reich Court Martial passed the death sentence on Arvid Harnack, which was carried out on December 22, 1942. Mildred Harnack was sentenced to six years in prison. However, Hitler ordered a new main hearing which ended on January 16, 1943 with a death sentence . On February 16, 1943 Mildred Harnack was the criminal prison Berlin-Plötzensee with the guillotine executed . Her last words were: “And I loved Germany so much.” Harnack-Fish is the only American civil person who was executed for resisting the Nazi regime.

Arvid's brother Falk Harnack , also a resistance fighter, was able to flee and survived the Second World War as an ELAS partisan in Greece.

When her friend and fellow student Clara Leiser found out about the beheading, she wrote the poem To and From the Guillotine as a memorial .

Honors

• 

  Memorial plaque at the Peter-A.-Silbermann-Schule / Friedrich-Ebert-Oberschule in Berlin-Wilmersdorf

• 

  Memorial stone for Mildred and Arvid Harnack at the Zehlendorf cemetery in Berlin

• On October 6, 1969, Mildred Harnack was posthumously awarded the Order of the Patriotic War, First Degree, by the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR .
• In Berlin-Lichtenberg , several streets in the Frankfurter Allee Süd residential area are named after members of the Red Orchestra. The Mildred Harnack School named after her is also located here , with a memorial plaque since 2007. Harnackstrasse is a reminder of her and her husband. In the same quarter, other streets are named after Albert Hößler , John Sieg , Harro and Libertas Schulze-Boysen , Wilhelm Guddorf , and Hans and Hilde Coppi .
• There has been a Mildred-Harnack-Strasse at the Mercedes-Benz Arena in Berlin's Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg district since 2008.
• In Berlin-Neukölln , a plaque on Lilienthalstrasse commemorates the Harnack couple and their roommate Stefan Heym .
• Mildred Harnack's name stands with that of her husband Arvid and ten other names on the memorial erected in 1976 for the members of the Humboldt University “who died in the fight against Hitler fascism” in the garden courtyard of the main building in Berlin-Mitte , Unter den Linden 6.
• The sculpture freedom fighters of Fritz Cremer in Bremen was founded in 1984 in memory of Mildred Harnack and Harro Schulze-Boysen at the Wilhelm Wagenfeld House in Bremer ramparts erected.
• A memorial plaque was unveiled on July 6, 2009 at today's Peter-A.-Silbermann-Schule (former Berlin evening grammar school). There was also a memorial event. Former students there reported that the school was renamed Mildred-Harnack-Fish-Kolleg by the students in the late 1960s in protest against the conservative namesake Peter Adalbert Silbermann .
• 

  The Mildred Harnack Fish House in Giessen
  There is a Mildred-Harnack-Weg in Giessen . In 2015, the Otto-Eger -Heim of the Studentenwerk was renamed the Mildred-Harnack-Fish-Haus.
• Stumbling blocks for Mildred and Arvid Harnack were laid in front of the house at Genthiner Strasse 14 in the Berlin district of Tiergarten on September 20, 2013 in the presence of US ambassador John B. Emerson .
• In her hometown of Milwaukee, an art school bears Mildred Harnack's name.
• Mildred Fish-Harnack has been celebrated at all schools in the state of Wisconsin since 1986.
• A memorial stone commemorates Mildred and Arvid Harnack at the Zehlendorf cemetery in Berlin. The grave of Arvid's brother Falk Harnack (1913–1991) is in this cemetery.

Translations

• Irving Stone : Lust for Life. ( Vincent van Gogh. A life of passion. ) Berlin 1936, Universitas.
• Walter D. Edmonds: Drums along the Mohawk. ( Peacock feather and cockade. ) Berlin 1938, Universitas.

Fonts

• Mildred Harnack: The Development of Contemporary American Literature in Some of the Leading Representatives of the Novel and Short Story. (Typewritten dissertation), Philosophical Faculty of the Ludwig University of Giessen, Giessen 1941.
• Mildred Harnack-Fish: Variations on the Theme of America. Studies on US literature. Edited by Eberhard Brüning. Aufbau-Verlag, Berlin et al. 1988, ISBN 3-351-01022-2 .

literature

• Stefan Roloff : The Red Chapel. Ullstein, 2002, ISBN 3-548-36669-4 .
• Shareen Blair Brysac: Resisting Hitler. Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra. Oxford University Press, 2000, ISBN 0-19-515240-9 .
  • German: Mildred Harnack and the "Red Orchestra". The story of an unusual woman and a resistance movement. Translated by Klaus Kochmann. Scherz, Bern 2003, ISBN 3-502-18090-3 .
• Gert Rosiejka: The Red Chapel. "Treason" as an anti-fascist resistance. Results, Hamburg 1986, ISBN 3-925622-16-0 .
• Martha Dodd : My years in Germany 1933–1937. Frankfurt am Main 2005, ISBN 978-3821807621 .
• Ingo Juchler (Ed.): Mildred Harnack and the Red Orchestra in Berlin. Universitätsverlag Potsdam, 2017, ISBN 978-3-86956-407-4 (PDF; 12.1 MB) .

Web links

Wikiquote: Mildred Harnack  - Quotes

Commons : Mildred Harnack  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

• Literature by and about Mildred Harnack-Fish in the catalog of the German National Library
• Short biography of the German Resistance Memorial Center

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Johannes Tuchel: »You have to celebrate Christmas properly« . From: DIE ZEIT, December 13, 2007 No. 51.
2. ↑ Neues Deutschland, December 23, 1969, p. 4. Online
3. ↑ Kümmels Anzeiger No. 02/09, heimatmuseum-erkner.de ; see. also the presentation by Egmont Zechlin , memories of Arvid and Mildred Harnack, in: “History in Science and Education”, 33/1982, pp. 395–404.
4. ↑ Brigitte Oleschinski: Plötzensee Memorial , p.28 (PDF)
5. ^ ^{A b} Mildred Fish Harnack Day .
6. ↑ Clara Leiser: To and From the Guillotine ( Memento of August 14, 2011 in the Internet Archive ), 1943. ( pdf )
7. ^ Peter Koblank: Harro Schulze-Boysen. Rote Kapelle: Resistance against Hitler and espionage for Stalin , online edition Mythos Elser 2014. Retrieved on January 27, 2014.
8. ↑ http://www.ub.hu-berlin.de/literatur-suchen/sammlungen/kustodie/denkmaeler/mahnmal
9. ↑ Memorial plaque in the Peter A. Silbermann School .
10. ↑ Documentation: Strike and counter-lessons at the Silbermannschule (evening high school). In: alternative , year 13, issue 74 (1970), p. 165.
11. ↑ What is behind the new name for the former Otto Eger Home. In: giessener-allgemeine.de. December 14, 2015, accessed December 14, 2015 . 
12. ↑ Stumbling stone ceremony in memory of Mildred Fish-Harnack and Arvid Harnack
13. ↑ Pictures from the ceremony
14. ^ Art Heitzer: Milwaukee commemorates Mildred Harnack in our sheet no. 67 of the Berlin VVN-BdA.
15. ^ Hans-Jürgen Mende : Lexicon of Berlin burial places . Pharus-Plan, Berlin 2018, ISBN 978-3-86514-206-1 , p. 674.
16. ↑ Silke Kettelhake: Review in HaGalil , originally in Jungle World , February 18, 2004.